September 11, 2005
Tomorrow
Really, say what you want about Russell Smith but I’ve enjoyed every one of his books that I’ve ever read. Currently in the final third of Muriella Pent and it’s wonderful. Otherwise, I made a fantastic spaghetti dinner Friday night and my future as a hostess is promising. And classes begin tomorrow.
September 7, 2005
Perks
Becky’s website is redesigned and you can see our Canadian wedding photos here! Today has been a marvelous day of schoolbook buying, as I managed to spend $50 of gift certificates I got as a wedding present, and get an out-of-print book used for $10. I also wrangled free cookies and juice, and Stuart and I had a little picnic at Hart House. To update the “Toronto is the best city to live in if you’re broke and looking for fun” file, we went to see the Fembots last night play a little free show at Soundscapes on College Street. They were ace, inevitable comparisons to the Jayhawks or Wilco but enough of their own. Their new CD is said to be excellent. A review of Zadie Smith’s “On Beauty”. She places her story in America, and I’m interested to see how she does that. I get a strong sense that (North) American writers really shouldn’t try to “write British”, and that the Brits themselves have more freedom to jump continents. My story takes place in England and I oft fear I don’t have the authority to carry it off altogether, though I did live there for nearly two years. There is a cultural gap however minute and it matters. Stuart keeps comparing everyone here to characters from an American Pie movie. Here, top ten books on Russia. Oh! Zadie is profiled, and discusses the novel as “an ethical enterprise”. I ran into a Professor today, and we talked about not only about the pain of so many books to be read, and the number that should be reread and how it’s never going to happen. Being a grad student has perks I never even imagined by the way.
September 6, 2005
Get back to where you once belonged
Nothing much changes on the UofT campus, and I have a part-time job at the library again. We had our “orientation” session this morning and classes start on Monday. The van finally did become available and we moved in Thursday night. Our apartment is absolutely gorgeous, and we really would be reluctant to leave it if the neighbourhood wasn’t so fantastic. All is really well.
August 31, 2005
A kind of holiday
We move tomorrow, and so who knows how long it will take before we have internet at home again. We are looking forward to going though, but there is plenty of organising to be done in the meantime. I am excited about opening boxes of stuff that’s been packed for over three years, and displaying things we have collected together over the last two years. Also excited about having closets and drawers, rare things when we lived in the Leo Palace. It’s going to be good.
Jonathan Freedman stretches things a bit with results worth reading. On the 8th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, he remembers the sweet dream of the 1990s, which, “viewed from today… look like a kind of holiday, a pause between two eras of anxiety and conflict. Just as Eric Hobsbawm defined the 19th century as stretching from 1789 to 1914, so we can take the same liberty: the 90s began with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and ended with the fall of the twin towers in 2001.”
August 28, 2005
Witness
I’ll admit to apprehension before my cousin’s wedding, due to some rather shameful wedding inadequacy issues. It’s not that my own wedding wasn’t brilliant in every way, and come on, I did have two. But it was no secret that their wedding would be far more elaborate and formal than ours had been, I knew how much work had been invested in it and I feared how my little homespun do would look in comparison. And wow, their wedding was incredible. They were married in a little white historic chapel in a conservation area near Jordan Ontario, in Niagara. Two enormous vases bursting with sunflowers stood at the alter, and the bride and groom were gorgeous as they walked down the aisle together to exchange their vows. The reception afterwards was held at the Inn on the Twenty, where we sipped (gulped) ice wine martinis and other fine beverages and feasted on delightful hors d’oeuvres. We entered the dining room for dinner, and were met with a view high atop the edge of a valley from windows which stretched along the entirety of one wall. Outside, black eyed susans grew into every shade of greenery, hills that rolled on and on and the vista was spread out before us like something absolutely magical. The meal was simply exquisite, and our table was marvelous company. After dinner and speeches, a band played fantastic music including an acoustic rendition of “You Shook Me All Night Long” and Stuart and I drank ourselves stupid and had to be driven home by my mother. We had a fabulous time with our cousins, and I was so pleased to be getting the best of family. There just aren’t enough happy occasions really. Not that there are so many sad ones, but there are too many ordinary days and I absolutely love weddings for bringing people together to celebrate nothing more than just love. And all stupid inadequacy was gone once I just started to enjoy myself, and appreciate how lucky I was to be there. Congratulations Alec and Jackie!
This summer I learned two things about being a wedding guest. First, what a great idea it is that everyone who attends a wedding does play a part in the ceremony, as a witness to the event, and therefore is obligated to support and nurture the couple’s relationship throughout their lives. I think a wedding is so much more meaningful when that is taken into account. Secondly, that as a guest your job throughout the wedding is to assure the bride that you and everyone you around is having enormous amounts of fun, because that’s probably all she really cares about.
August 26, 2005
Mini Break
Tra la la! I am off on a three day wedding mini-break extravaganza. And for once, the wedding is not my own.
August 25, 2005
American books are UGLY
Here we have the cover of the American edition of “We Need to Talk About Kevin”. It looks like a substandard diary of someone like Adrian Mole, and would fail to overly appeal to its target audience.
The UK edition is better, darker and more interesting.
The American edition of Brick Lane does have a beautiful cover, but it’s clutching too hard to the ethnic card (and trying to appeal to women in book groups such as the one illustrated in the below mentioned article who feel better about themselves when they read books about Asia)
…whilst in the UK, where Asia is not as foreign a theme, this simpler cover was put forth. Though I haven’t finished reading this book, so far I think it’s more reflective of the subject matter than the other.
August 22, 2005
Most of all, you've got to hide it from the kids
Here you can find Heather Mallick’s critique of the CBC’s recent “Open Letter to Canadians”, which I can’t find online. She’s on the mark, and I think it follows well from Margaret Wente’s column last week. The Guardian celebrates the underrated, including Atomic Kitten, deservedly so. On my third day with Stuart in O’Neils’ in Nottingham, their version of “The Tide is High” came on the radio and I cried, though perhaps that was more due to my mental imbalances than great musicianship. I also love their “Someone Like Me”. An excellent article, on Ms. Dynamite’s new album and the important role played by women in protest music. No more prodigies at Oxford. Multiculturalism from the British child of Pakistani immigrants. In The Globe, Doug Saunders compares reaction to the London terror actions with that of the Gunpowder treason 400 years ago. And this article contrasts British and Canadian multiculturalism.
Other incidents recently included the German man in Book City who kept repeating the title “Hop on Pop” repeatedly to a clerk. The fact that the Don Valley Parkway was in the midst of flooding as we drove through it Friday night. The clip we heard as we flipped through the radio stations, “…and Deanna Smith who will shoot herself out of a cannon daily…” and just how excited we are to be moving to Toronto in a matter of days. The amount of furniture we picked up off the roadside driving home last night. We’ve seen some photos from the wedding last weekend and they’re beautiful. Will post a link this week.
I bought Lunch With Jan Wong for $2 the other day and really enjoyed it. Also fell in love with the Terry Fox book by Douglas Coupland, but alas as it was not $2, I could not buy it.
August 20, 2005
Less than
Sad to hear about the death of Mo Mowlam, who was such an unusual breath of fresh air among politicians. Sad also to follow the story of the missing woman in Toronto, who is one of about four missing women in Canada in the news right now. It’s a sick and scary world sometimes, and women are so vulnerable. I hope she is found safe.
